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Sophos

There are a lot of things that I am uncomfortable with in the new Windows 10.

Oh sure, it’s shiny! and new! and free!

But wait, haven’t you heard the old line “If you aren’t the customer, you are the product”?

Microsoft is using that logic on your new free version of Windows 10 Home.

With all the privacy holes that Microsoft created with Windows 10 I really do feel like I’m watching the movie 1984 where the TVs are watching you – and can never be turned off.

Same thing with the book Fahrenheit 451, but I never saw a movie version of the book that did it justice.

You made the choice to go to Windows 10 because Windows 8.1 bleah. I know, I said the same thing about 8 and 8.1 but I am not at this time going to windows 10 unless I can figure out how to make myself comfortable with it.

I’ll let the bugs get worked out, let the hackers figure out how to stop Cortana from watching over my shoulder, and so forth. Maybe when the free year is up, I may take advantage of the Free! Windows 10! Upgrade!

But honestly, probably not. This is being written from Linux and frankly it does everything I need and about twice as fast as Windows 8.1 ever did – on the same machine. Yes, you can do both. I am, but if you are an “end user” or “Mom just surfs the web” user, you probably won’t.

Never mind all that. You made your choice. Here’s what is happening.

With “old” windows you got windows updates directly from the mothership – Microsoft. It would go out in the middle of the night, download patches, restart your computer, and you wouldn’t really know what all happened.

Every so often it would glitch and you’d have to talk to your neighbor’s 13 year old who “lives in the basement” to get it fixed, and you’d go back on your way after tossing him a $20.

Now Windows 10 Home goes out, grabs the updates from something called a torrent. Basically it’s like the old Napster was – grab things from who ever has a piece of it.

Mind you, Torrents can be amazing things. I grabbed my copy of Debian Linux using a torrent.

But.

Here is why you don’t want that happening.

It can either slow your computer down (especially if you have an older one) or it can easily slow down your network connection.

Windows Updates now looks on your network for other computers that have Windows 10 and will grab what it needs to assemble the Update, then send it to whoever requests it.

Yeah, I thought it was a bit odd, perhaps heavy handed, too.

So if you made the jump and are happy with Windows 10, Great, but here is how to stop that behavior.

Go to the not-actually-very-obvious Settings → Updates and Security → Advanced options → Choose how you download updates → Get updates from more than one place.

Your choices are:

Off. Your computer calls home to Microsoft, and gets updates only from there.

PCs on my local network. WUDO (Windows Update) will “torrent-share” files, but only between computers on your own LAN.

PCs on my local network and on the internet. You’ll potentially get files from, and offer file uploads to, computers anywhere in the world.

The best one for you at home will be the second selection – PC’s On My Local Network. It saves you from having all of your PCs using your connection to talk to Microsoft for their updates.